Truecaller, a worldwide number lookup service, today updated its iPhone app to add Caller ID functionality to it. The feature has been available on the Android version of the app for a few years now, but TrueCaller was unable to bring it to iOS due to the various restrictions placed by Apple. For now, it remains unclear how the company has finally managed to bring this feature to iOS since Apple does not provide any such APIs in iOS 9.
The Caller ID feature will automatically provide you with the name of the person calling you, irrespective of whether you have their number in your contact book or not.
https://twitter.com/AlanMamedi/status/729699616183222272
The only catch to using the Caller ID feature of Truecaller in iOS is that you must have the app running in the background. There is no such requirement on the Android version of the app, though I guess that is one trade-off iOS users are not going to mind making.
Truecaller had briefly added Caller ID feature to their iOS app in 2014, but the process was cumbersome. It required users to take a screenshot of the number they wanted to look up and then within a few seconds; the app would speak out the name of the caller.
It remains unclear how the latest implementation of Caller ID from Truecaller works, but the screenshot suggests that it works in a similar fashion to its Android counterpart — i.e. a small pop-up comes up on the screen displaying the caller’s information. For now, though, many users who have updated the app on their iPhone report that the feature is not working for them.
What do you think of TrueCaller’s new Caller ID functionality? Let us know in the comments.
→ Download: Truecaller for iOS
Update:
The original version of this post said Truecaller for iPhone supports Live Caller ID like Android, but that’s not the case. Live Caller ID is not available on the iPhone due to limitations imposed by iOS.
